The entrance to UNI DUFOUR from rue du Général Dufour.
LUCIEN FORTUNATI
Geneva, August 19
In March 2022, the University Conference of Student Associations (CUAE) of the University of Geneva published an advertisement for a position of permanent secretary at 40%. Among the qualities required of the candidate, the advertisement stipulated that “due to the statutes of the CUAE fixing the mix within the secretariat, only the files of men (note: no mention of women in this announcement) or non-binary people will be retained”.
“Non-binary” is an umbrella term for “gender identities” possessed by individuals who feel neither male nor female. Gender identity, on the other hand, refers to a person’s strong feeling of being a man, a woman, both at the same time or of an alternative gender that escapes this binary. It generally designates something universal, innate and self-conferred by subjective experience. In other words, a candidate can qualify for this secretary position if they claim to be non-binary, regardless of their biological sex.
However, since non-binarity is not a material category or an observable characteristic, it depends on the acceptance of the fact that only the inner experience of the subject determines his true identity. Biological sex is irrelevant in determining whether a person has an intimate sense of being – and therefore is – male, female, both, or one of the many alternatives available in the LGBTQIA+ repertoire.
“The only way to circumvent this impasse is to no longer promote the mixing of the sexes, but the mixing of subjective experiences.”
It follows logically that the CUAE must accept the application of a woman declaring to identify as male or non-binary. Mixing between the sexes cannot be simultaneously defined according to a biological criterion and according to a psychological criterion without becoming incoherent: the former defines a woman as a female adult human, while the latter circularly defines a woman as a person who identifies woman. The only way to circumvent this impasse, and incidentally to respect the imperative of inclusiveness indicated by the inclusive spelling, consists in promoting not the mixing of the sexes, but the mixing of subjective experiences.
The good news is that recognizing non-binarity as a valid category in the selection of a candidate opens up new horizons: the CUAE could indeed accommodate only men or only women without ever contravening its principle of diversity .
Let’s hope that this sound logic will be embraced by all the cantonal institutions that are concerned about the statistical distribution between the… sexes? Progress always has progress to make.
Olivier Moos, the story
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– An announcement for non-binaries
Letter from readers
Published today at 09:00